Pokémon fans love exploring and collecting the variety of Pokémon types just as much as OREO fans love discovering everything new from OREO.

To promote the new OREO x Pokémon limited edition cookie, we surrounded every part of the launch with elements of discovery. From an animated reveal video & pop-up art installation crafted entirely out of OREOS, to a rarification scheme that made some cookies harder to find than others, we enticed both fandoms to find ‘em all. And fans were here for it. The OREO x Pokémon collab has been OREO’s fastest-selling and top-grossing limited edition launch yet.

Every year, OREO crafts a remarkable fan-first partnership to drive sales and the internet wild. With their 25th anniversary approaching, we chose Pokémon.

This campaign’s objective was to stand out in a crowded category that’s awash in partnerships, to go beyond slapping a logo on a cookie. We needed to translate Pokémon’s core rarity scheme to real-life OREO packages and transform the classic Limited Time Offer brand partnership into a sought-after cultural hit.

Objectives:

Drive brick-and-mortar and online sales of this LTE pack: KPIs included max weekly velocities, pre-order online sales, and daily unit sales.

Create genuine excitement among Pokémon fans: KPIs included engagement, and video views across organic and paid social channels; shopping clicks, and influencer engagement rate.

Cement OREO’s place in pop culture: KPIs included sentiment, broadcast & social earned media placements, organic social media impressions, and total earned media program impressions.

OREO has been ahead of the curve with powerhouse partnerships: Lady Gaga, Supreme, and Game of Thrones helped elevate OREO into popular culture through nationwide US launches. Yet other brands caught on, and as the category has become awash in surface-level partnerships, we had to evolve our approach.

Connecting with consumers via fandom requires a true understanding of what turns the casual consumer into a fan.

This project was inspired by the organic synergy between OREO and Pokémon and expanded upon by research of the Pokémon fandom. OREO and Pokémon are both centered on play and discovery: Pokémon fans love exploring and collecting the wide variety of Pokémon types as much as OREO fans love finding and trying everything new from OREO.

We created a unique campaign that makes both OREO and Pokémon fans go wild– Smashing previous records and creating the bestselling OREO LTE pack ever in the process.

Pokémon has been around for 25 years and is always evolving so it never gets stale. While many Pokémon fans are children, teenagers, and their parents who already buy OREO, the remaining Pokémon fans are an untapped audience, falling in between the traditional markers of childhood and adulthood.

While Americans love OREOs as kids, as adults they often stop embracing the playfulness that makes the cookies special. Pokémon fans between being children and having children, represent an opportunity for consumers to discover new ways to enjoy OREO. With this partnership, we invited both frequent and infrequent OREO buyers to rediscover the playfulness of Pokémon and OREO alike.

Simply put, the power of discovery allows both brands' fanatics to ignite a child-like wonder in a world where most don’t have time to do so. This powerful commonality allowed us to activate both fandoms, honing in our fans’ love for the hunt.

The collab was announced with a playfully-pixelated animated video made entirely out of the iconic cookies. We started with hand-drawn animation to create a new character and to match Pikachu's design. Then, using custom algorithms, we turned our line-art into fully rendered OREO pixels.

Our out-of-home art installation featured a pixelated Pikachu made entirely out of over 8,000 3D-printed life-size OREO replicas. The larger-than-life mural was located on the high-traffic Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles. Each black and white section was printed separately over hundreds of hours and hand-assembled.

We paid tribute to the most beloved Pokémon with 16 unique cookie embossments featuring Pokémon such as Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle— BUT just like in the Pokémon world, some cookies are harder to find. Each pack is filled randomly and doesn't necessarily contain cookies with all 16 embossment designs. Every pack is a new chance to find them all.

OREO x Pokémon LTE packs crushed records for our previous LTE partnerships. The success of the launch has put OREO on the path to adding a whopping $1B in sales by 2023.

Dominated online buzz:

2.62B+ UVPM Total Program Impressions, topping Supreme LTE’s 2B impressions

1,644 Total Online, Broadcast + Social Placements

374 Broadcast Segments on Top 50 DMAs; over 200% more broadcast hits than Lady Gaga LTE

14M+ total organic social impressions

99% positive + neutral sentiment

Broke into new media verticals including: gaming, esports, entertainment, and business.

Created genuine excitement among Pokémon fans:

364k+ total organic social media engagements

1.5M+ total video views across organic social

29.3M+ views across paid social

14k+ Instagram shopping clicks, 12k over OREO LTE average

Influencer posts garnered 5.1% average engagement rate vs. Industry 2% benchmark

Like the rarest Pokémon cards, our rarest Mew cookies appeared on eBay for thousands of dollars